Blast (BLAST) is a groundbreaking Ethereum L2 solution designed to provide native yield for ETH and stablecoins. Unlike other L2 solutions offering 0% interest, Blast includes native yield, meaning users' balances grow automatically over time. Specifically, Blast offers a 3.4% yield on ETH and an 8% yield on stablecoins.
Origin of Blast
Blast originated from a completely different project, Blur, a decentralized exchange (DEX) for NFTs running on Ethereum. It uses Optimistic Rollup technology for scaling and is one of the leading NFT providers in the crypto world.
The Blast Team
Blast is created by a team of experienced developers and contributors from renowned institutions and organizations. Key figures behind Blast include Pacman, the creator of Blur (a top NFT marketplace protocol on Ethereum), and contributors from leading institutions such as MIT, Yale, NTU, SNU, and Y-Combinator (YC). The team has a strong background in DeFi and Web3, primarily working on major protocols on Ethereum but also researching other chains like Solana.
Blast's Investors
Blast has attracted significant interest from the venture capital community. It has raised $20 million from notable investors such as Paradigm, Standard Crypto, eGirl Capital, Primitive Ventures, Andrew Kang, Hasu, Foobar, Blurr, Will Price, Hsaka, Santiago Santos, Larry Cermak, Manifold, Jeff Lo, and other prominent crypto investors.
How Blast (BLAST) Works
1. Auto-Rebasing
One of Blast's main features is auto-rebasing. In Blast, ETH and USDB (Blast's native stablecoin) balances automatically rebase. This means users' balances grow over time without any additional effort. Unlike other systems that use wrapped versions of ETH (such as WETH or STETH), Blast allows ETH itself to natively rebase on L2. This feature is available for externally owned accounts (EOA) and can be optionally enabled for smart contracts.
2. L1 Staking
Blast leverages Ethereum's Shanghai upgrade to facilitate L1 staking. Initially, the ETH yield generated by Lido's L1 staking is transferred to users by rebasing ETH on L2. This system ensures users benefit from the yield generated by staked ETH without navigating complex staking protocols.
3. Treasury Bill Yield
For stablecoin yields, Blast uses MakerDAO's on-chain treasury bill protocol. When users bridge stablecoins to Blast, they receive USDB, an automatically rebasing stablecoin. USDB's yield comes from the treasury bill protocol and can be redeemed for DAI when bridged back to Ethereum. This integration provides a substantial 8% yield on stablecoins, significantly higher than typical yields on other platforms.
4. Gas Revenue Sharing
Unlike other L2s that retain gas revenue, Blast programmatically redistributes net gas revenue back to Dapps. This revenue sharing incentivizes Dapp developers to build on Blast, as they can retain this revenue or use it to subsidize users' gas fees. This approach aligns the interests of Dapp developers and users, fostering a more active and user-friendly ecosystem.
Blast Tokenomics
1. Community: 50,000,000,000 (50%)
Blast's success is attributed to the community of users and builders contributing to the ecosystem. 50% of the total BLAST supply is reserved for the community and will be distributed through incentive activities. 100% of this allocation will go directly to the community. The community allocation will vest linearly over 3 years from the TGE date, with any distributions made according to a schedule determined by the Blast Foundation.
2. Core Contributors: 25,480,226,842 (25.5%)
All tokens allocated to core contributors have a 4-year lock-up period, with 25% of the core contributor tokens unlocking 1 year after the TGE date, followed by monthly linear unlocking over the next 3 years.
3. Investors: 16,519,773,158 (16.5%)
All tokens allocated to investors have a 4-year lock-up period, with 25% of the investor tokens unlocking 1 year after the TGE date, followed by monthly linear unlocking over the next 3 years.
4. Blast Foundation: 8,000,000,000 (8%)
The foundation's allocation will be reserved for key infrastructure and further development of the Blast ecosystem. The foundation allocation will vest linearly over 4 years from the TGE date.
Blast Phase One Airdrop
1. Blast Points: 7,000,000,000 (7%)
Users who connect ETH or USDB to Blast provide the initial liquidity for the Blast ecosystem and will receive Blast Points in Phase One. These users will be rewarded with 7% of the total BLAST supply.
2. Blast Gold: 7,000,000,000 (7%)
Users contributing to the success of Dapps will receive Blast Gold and will be rewarded with 7% of the total BLAST supply.
3. Vesting
The top 0.1% of users (approximately 1,000 wallets) will have a portion of the airdrop vested linearly over 6 months. Vesting requires meeting monthly points thresholds based on Phase One activities.
4. Blur Foundation: 3,000,000,000 (3%)
The Blur Foundation will receive 3% of the total BLAST supply to distribute to the Blur community for retrospective and future airdrops.
Blast Popular Ecosystem
Currently, the Base ecosystem has over 100 projects, with a relatively complete scale. Infrastructure accounts for a significant portion, including but not limited to bridges, on-ramps, wallets, oracles, and node providers. Base native DeFi projects also account for a large portion of locked assets and transaction volumes, with many multi-chain DeFi projects such as Uniswap and Sushi expanding to the platform. Major NFT marketplaces and minting tools like OpenSea and ZORA have also integrated with the Base mainnet.
Ambient
Ambient (formerly known as CrocSwap) is a decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol that combines concentrated and ambient constant product liquidity on any pair of blockchain assets. Ambient operates the entire DEX within a single smart contract, where individual AMM pools are lightweight data structures rather than separate smart contracts. These design choices make Ambient one of the most efficient Ethereum-based DEXs.
SynFutures
SynFutures is a derivatives exchange that recently launched the Oyster Odyssey points program on Blast. Users will start accumulating points passively by trading and providing liquidity on SynFutures, as well as earning Blast Points/Gold Points.
Munchables
Munchables is an upcoming NFT/GameFi project on Blast and the winner of the recent Big Blast competition. Munchables will launch a locking event where users can lock their ETH for a month to earn NFTs, Blast Gold/Points, Schnibbles, and more.
nftperp
nftperp is an open-source DeFi platform that offers a platform to trade NFT value without owning the NFTs themselves, using a perpetual contract model with robust liquidity systems. Users can trade on the prices of NFT collections like Pudgy Penguins and CryptoPunks, with all trades settled in ETH.
Conclusion
The risks associated with Blast primarily lie in technical aspects such as multisig and potential financial design risks. The team is actively working on addressing these technical issues, which need further observation post-mainnet launch. The financial design risk is that Blast's yield design relies on Ethereum native applications like Lido and MakerDAO, reflecting Ethereum's application composability. However, if the underlying applications encounter risks, systemic risks are inevitable. As a prominent chain, Blast's future development will require validation from the market.
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